19 comments on “A Whole Bunch of People Singing In A Car”

san san chali jo hawa was the first song that came to my mind after I read the title of your post and then ham mast dilo ko lekar chali motor.
The only other song that i can recall at the moment, which could fit in here is chahe koi khush ho chahe gaaliyan hazar de from Taxi Driver

I know there are several songs with a car load of people singing them, but not one is coming to my head right now.
Will get back with one/some asap.

All the 3 songs mentioned by you are very familiar as I’ve seen Kaagaz ke phool and Paigham. The third one was posted by you earlier. I remember it distinctly because you mentioned a young Raj Kapoor – I never could find which one in spite of watching it again and again.

I particularly love San san san woh chali hawa, Richard. One of my favourite ‘motor’ songs. I was going to suggest Chaahe koi khush ho chaahe gaaliyaan hazaar de, but since Harvey’s already put that in, I’m in the same boat as pacifist – I know there are some songs like that out there, but they’re all eluding me right now. :-(

I went away for just a little while and, ooh, there are so many good comments! And now you all are going to get a very long comment back. LOL

Harvey, thanks for the suggestion, but I don’t know… “Chahe Koi Khush Ho Chahe Gaaliyan” has just five guys in a car. Is that a whole bunch? Maybe it’s marginally acceptable. :)

On the other hand, Anu, your suggestion of just three guys really doesn’t qualify, I don’t think. :)

But I think I will take the Singapore song :)… I had remembered that there was a song in Singapore in which a bunch of women were standing up in the back of a car, but I also remembered that that happened very briefly and the song went in all other directions, so I didn’t think it would quite fit. But now I can see that the scene in the car is so similar to the first two scenes on my list (from Paigham and Sunehre Din), I have decided the song should qualify for that reason alone, even if the cast is running around in many other places for most of it.

And by the way, you may have noticed that the mention of Singapore inspired me to put a different picture of Padmini in the image header. :) (Though, of course, that will change again soon enough…)

Responding to both you and Dustedoff… Yes, “San San Woh Chali Hawa” is a great one – though I think it is great, especially to watch, because of the acting of Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehaman. Waheeda is especially fantastic here.

However, my favorite of these songs is “Ham Mast Dilon Ko Lekar.” The reason is that this song features a lot of the things that caused me to become a big fan of the film music from the ’40s. For one thing, there is the great variety of voices, including Shamshad Begum, Kalyani, and G.M. Durrani. (But the film itself has even more: Geeta Dutt, Sulochana Kadam, Surinder Kaur, and a lot of Mukesh!) And we get to see Rehana sitting in the front of a car with Nigar Sultana!… I also have seen decent subtitles for this one, and I think the song is very amusing, perhaps one of the first great battle-of-the-sexes songs? Similar to others in that tradition, it also is kind of a qawwali (at least at times), and how many qawwalis have taken place in moving cars? And there is that good music by Gyan Dutt…

And that brings me to Pacifist’s comment…

Regarding our prior conversation about this, well, I said that I thought Raj Kapoor was in the car, but then I wasn’t sure. (I just couldn’t tell from the angle that I was seeing the guy who I assumed to be Raj Kapoor – so maybe I wasn’t seeing Raj Kapoor in this car.) But then the conversation took a strange turn, because you asked me if Raj Kapoor was even in the cast, when he was obviously the hero of the movie. But you had been looking at the cast to a different film. And that is how the confusing conversation went at the time. :)

Anyway, Pacifist, I am glad you liked this and it’s good to see that you love such posts. Maybe I should do a lot more lists. And I could come up with a lot, actually, but I doubt I’ll ever catch up with Harvey.

Like Harvey, I would like to keep the lists somewhat specific…

So, Ann, moving trains and bull or ox carts (as well as buses, Harvey) would have to go somewhere else. In fact, there could be huge lists involving just trains, moving or otherwise. (Actually, there have been already, on a few blogs – including this one, though not as huge here. And there are good ones on my YouTube site, LifeIsaTrain!)

But I am already having second thoughts about rejecting the ox carts. I might be very tempted to include a bunch of people singing in an ox cart, because then I could include this:

@Richard, regarding Chaahe koi khush ho chaahe gaaliyaan… well, I think five people in a car should qualify, because strictly even San san san woh chali hawa (no matter that all of us like it so much) isn’t a bunch of people in a car. Waheeda Rehman and Guru Dutt are in a car; Mehmood and his gang are in a lorry… not a car.

Thanks, Cram. I think one of the reasons you are enjoying the comments more is that other people made such good suggestions, etc. But also, maybe you would have liked to see some writing in the post… A lot of times, lately, I have just posted the clips with very little text and didn’t get into really writing about them until other people said some other things first. :)

The Dev song is nice, but I don’t think it qualifies… The monstrosity of a vehicle is acceptable, but I don’t see anyone singing but him. (And there seems to be just one passenger in the vehicle – whom he doesn’t even know about until the end.) Now, if all the girls carrying the pots of water had gotten inside the vehicle and started to sing with him… Yes, that would have been more like it. :)

Thanks for the Padmini-Lalitha dance. I think I have actually seen and posted other songs from that film to show Lalitha, but I have never had a chance before to see this Padmini-Lalitha dance.

By the way, there’s some part of the music near the beginning that reminds me a lot of some Hindi film song… I’m trying to figure out or remember what that is but have not been able to so far.

Pacifist, thank you for these two additions, neither of which I had ever seen before. The first one could fit under a bicycle songs theme too – and that would include some good ones. (But not right away. :) ) And I would like to see that second film. Ashok Kumar and Meena Kumari were a good combination, not sufficiently appreciated. (There is another blogger who pointed that out – though I can’t remember who right now.)

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